Copper Sulphate or just about anything with (ionic) copper in it will keep
roots at a distance.

You can dissolve the copper sulphate in water and saturate the crack in the
slab. Roots will never live in that soil again and the source plant may not
even be damaged if the treated area is localized and plenty of other roots
still exist. It is not technically a herbacide but roots cannot function it
its presence

A spoonfull of the stuff down the drain once in a while is supposed to help
also but I would think it would be washed away too soon to have long lasting
effect but it might help clear a partially invaded drain pipe.


"themeanies" wrote in message
...
David Martel wrote:

tM

I don't follow why the roots are a problem. Think for a minute, the
toilet does not have enough water to cause the amount of damage that you
saw. You had a big leak from somewhere and the roots may be a symptom.
Use a poison on the roots to get rid of them and find out where all that
water is coming from. You may have a leaking pipe in the slab or a
drainage problem.

Good luck,
Dave M.


Sorry, probably need a bit more explaining here. We found the leak
already. The leak was actually in a hot water pipe between the hot water
heater and the kitchen sink. We found it through acoustics. We abandoned
that line and ran a new one through the attic. When the pipe gave way
water that escaped built up under the slab until it forced through at the
first point it found. This happened to be the path the roots I found also
took. I know this is where the water came up because the entire room was
filled with silt from under the foundation. I've never had any problem
with roots before, but I do know how destructive they can be. I didn't
even know about the roots until we moved the toilet yesterday to begin
sheetrock repair. But now that I do things make much more sense.

My question here was really about how to defend against the encroaching
root system and how to clean them out of there before they get even more
out of hand. I'll try to get some pictures on a website for visual
tomorrow.

I'll try killing them off with a poison an see if anything outside dies. I
don't have anything outside that I prefer more than my foundation that's
for sure.

Thanks,
tM